


Ghosts

by in_deepest_blue



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection, imported from LJ / FF.Net
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29083668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_deepest_blue/pseuds/in_deepest_blue
Summary: Roy Mustang doesn't believe in ghosts, but they haunt him anyway.(Originally written in 2007; imported only now.)
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> I've been feeling nostalgic today, so I decided to upload some of my older fics that I found ok-ish. I was pleasantly surprised to remember that I'd written some Roy/Riza fic, because even until now, in 2021, I still find it hard to get into Roy's and Riza's heads — despite the fact that I love the both of them (they're one of my oldest OTPs). 
> 
> It's difficult to explore their complex personalities and to think of newer, fresher scenarios, because almost everything about Roy and Riza’s relationship has been put into words by countless other authors, many of whom have such a way with words! Going over the notes I made for this fic back in 2007, I guess some things haven't really changed — even then, it was hard for me to explore Roy/Riza's characters. (And that's why I figured that I just had to back up the few Roy/Riza fics I wrote and import them here.)
> 
> Anyway, this one was inspired by Toni Morrison's _Beloved_.

The alchemist in him, trained to rely on skepticism and the scientific method, would be quick to dismiss ghosts as products of an overactive imagination, or of delusions and hallucinations. But science cannot explain the images and sounds that have hardly spared him a moment of peace. Science can’t tell him how to stand against something that doesn’t exist at all.

Like fossils and ancient relics dug up from the earth, his troubled mind conjures up images – of blood (the stains that he sees on his hands, even when they appear clean), of fire (eating away everything in its path), of war (Ishbal was a rude wake-up call that opened his eyes to the horrors of reality), of rain (washes his guilt and the blood away, but not his sins). Screams of pain and agony (“no more”) play over and over again like an eerie, twisted orchestra of sorrow.

These are the ghosts that lurk in his subconscious, that manifest themselves in flashbacks, nightmares and triggered memories. These are the ghosts that do not disappear by sunrise; instead, they are banished to the darkness — like the figures, dark and mysterious, that the shadows create on his walls when night sets in — where they lurk in wait for another time, another day to remind him of the pain and the burden that he carries. It’s hard enough dealing with the living, but it’s just as difficult to pay the price for taking innumerable lives.

But Riza, having ghosts of her own, knows and shares his pain fully. She understands that Roy doesn’t always mean it when he says that the living are scarier than the dead. She knows that at night he remembers things that others would have forgotten, and relives the suffering unknown to so many. Maybe she can’t make his ghosts vanish, but she tries to chase them away, to lessen the weight of his anguish.

To Roy, Riza is the silent force that keeps him together, the anchor that holds him in place, where he should be. She knows that it is meaningless to dwell in the past as ghosts do — in a circular and infinite cycle of always taking in sorrow but never spitting it out. And so she faithfully reminds him that they do not live in a world of “before”, “once”, “long ago”, and “if only." They live for today, for the promise of tomorrow, for the not-so-distant dream of giving Amestris a better tomorrow.

Roy Mustang may not believe in ghosts, but he has to live with them. It may sound strange, having to live with something that may or may not exist. For him it is like equivalent trade — he took others’ lives and he took the accompanying guilt with him, to follow him forever like an ominous shadow hanging overhead, like ghosts that refuse to become buried and forgotten. He may have specters of the past hounding him and hands forever tainted with blood, but he, together with Riza and his subordinates, has a goal to carry out and a path to forge for the country. Perhaps when the day comes that he reaches the top, he will be able to lay his ghosts to rest, perpetually, beneath the earth.


End file.
